Where once investing was something for an older crowd, today it’s proving highly popular among young Belgians as easy access and worries about their financial future are pushing them to the stock market.
In addition to his studies, 21-year-old student Casper Bekaert researches steel companies, tracks shifts in the pharma market and evaluates future geopolitical tensions. He does not just research those arcane subjects for fun, but because he wants to know which stocks to buy.
“That’s the fun part of investment: you learn about all these new things and dive deep into them,” he told The Brussels Times.
Investing is also popular among Bekaert’s peers. He is the president of an investment club at the University of Ghent. Together, the club's 100 members pool money and decide which stocks to buy.
“The number of applications has doubled in the past three years,” he said. “We have a significant waiting list.”
Bekaert isn’t alone in this new hobby. Investing is booming among young people. In the past, it was something established adults did, relying on local banks to guide them. Today, Belgian youth increasingly put their money to work on the stock market themselves.
According to the Belgian financial regulator (FSMA), active Belgian stock investors under the age of 30 grew from 33,000 in 2022 to 46,000 in 2025. The youngest age bracket showed the highest growth. A study by the bank BNP Paribas Fortis found that 56% of new investors are between 18 and 34 years old.
"The age of the median investor is decreasing," Kenneth De Beckker, Assistant Professor of Finance at Open Universiteit and Guest Professor of Finance at KU Leuven, confirmed to The Brussels Times. "In the past, investing was something older people did. Now, that has completely changed."
From bank to app
Several factors drive this shift. First, stock purchases require far less effort today. In the past, buying stocks often meant a visit to a bank. Today, anyone can buy stocks online with just a few clicks.
Information is also everywhere: social media channels are flooded with videos that explain market basics to young people. A few decades ago, to gain similar levels of knowledge, a person had to join clubs, read books, or subscribe to financial magazines.
Equally important: generally, the market performs well. Stock prices have trended upward for most of the past decade.
"Covid-19 caused a slight dip, but over the long term, it keeps going up," said De Beckker. “On the whole, the stock market is doing quite well for itself, for now."
Savings accounts, on the other hand, performed badly the past years, often offering returns far below inflation rates in Belgium.
Credit: Unsplash
Yet, anxiety about the future is also driving young people to invest. Many doubt they will be able to receive a pension, buy a house or access social security as easily as their parents once did. The stock market is a way for them to protect their financial future.
“Most young people I know don’t trade just to party,” said Bekaert. “Young people see how the welfare state is being drained. Which is why they often look toward the long term, and reinvest their profits.”
Thomas Guenter, CEO of fund manager Finhouse, who also posts financial education content on social media, argued that the pension system in Belgium isn’t sustainable. "Today’s workers finance today’s pensions, and an ageing population means that burden will become heavier. Young people are realising that they need to build up capital themselves for their retirement."
Boom and bust
Among this younger crowd, so-called passive investing is often popular. This means that money is put into things like index funds, ETFs and trackers. These funds mirror broader markets, and might, for example, track the stock prices of the 500 largest American companies.
This structure gives them greater diversification and carries less risk when one company or even one sector performs badly. Investors that buy broader index funds often outperform active stock pickers who select individual companies.
"Why try to find the needle in the haystack if you can just buy the haystack?" Guenter said. "Broad low-cost index investing has historically outperformed a large share of actively managed funds or stock pickers."
This approach is sometimes called "hammock investing," because buyers purchase index funds at set intervals, then step back without constant management. FSMA data shows these funds are especially popular among younger demographics.
Credit: StockSnap
Some, such as Belgian engineer Sébastien Aguilar, even managed to retire through passive investment strategies. Aguilar retired at age 33 based on a portfolio he created with his wife. Today, he leads FIRE Belgium. The FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early) encourages financial independence through strategies like passive investment, but also things like real estate projects.
"I retired at 33, eight years ago," Aguilar said. "I'm running FIRE Belgium now, but I don't pay myself. I don't want to turn this into a job (laughs)."
Aguilar welcomes the turn toward the stock market among young people, but he also offers a warning: the current period of strong growth will not last forever.
“We haven’t seen a real stock market crash since the 2008 financial crisis,” Aguilar noted. “Most traders today have never experienced a crash. I fear many cannot handle a crash emotionally and will sell at severe losses.”
Marathon
Young investors might also fall for get-rich-quick schemes, from speculative cryptocurrencies to dropshipping scams. The same drivers that push youth toward the stock markets, easy access and financial worry, can lead them into bad financial choices.
"It's easy to get dragged into things," said Guenter. "There are a lot of high-risk areas plagued by scams, such as forex trading, leveraged trading, and crypto pump-and-dump schemes. It's great that young people want to invest, but falling for shortcuts and scams is a real problem."
For Bekaert, however, that fear is overstated. “I don’t even know anyone today who still trades crypto."
“I get annoyed when people listen only to scaremongers who label young people as greedy or naive," he said. "Market success is a marathon, not a sprint, and most young people understand that.”
